Retailers like Wal-Mart, The Home Depot and Target invest heavily in strategies and technologies that help them sell more, grow rapidly, and cut operating expenses. Their success demonstrates that operational efficiency dictates survival, and that access to retail information impacts growth and profitability.
As a result of changes in the retail industry including intensified competition, retailers now desire immediate access to ever changing information. They desire the ability to instantly act on that information, either selectively by store, region, or globally. There is a desire for store-based information that is easily and flexibly reportable, and for management capability that enables decisions to be easily entered, implemented, and enforced.
Information technology infrastructure should tell management what was bought, when, where, by whom and why. Retailers should be able to determine the impact of promotions and markdowns, buying trends, and dynamic consumer demographics/life styles. There should be support for strategic decisions to be made centrally and implemented chain-wide or at individual stores. Retailers and suppliers should be able to work together to distribute the right merchandise mix in a timely, efficient manner.
Accordingly, retailers have struggled for years to set up information systems that integrate and connect headquarters, in-store processors and point-of-sale systems. Lack of a comprehensive solution forced chains to piece together closed proprietary systems often based on disparate data models and data access techniques. The cost and complexity—and lack of certainty—in deploying such piece work solutions have slowed the growth of small and medium-sized chains.
One example of a response to the needs of small to mid-size stores/chains is the Microsoft Retail Management System (MRMS) available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. The MRMS package is designed to support the growing number of small to mid-size stores/chains looking for software to grow as they grow and address immediate and future business goals. As an integrated, business-wide, point-of-sale and retail management solution, the MRMS software allows mid-size retail chains to take advantage of price and technical innovations in commodity hardware, software and internet-enabling technologies. The system enables small and mid-size retail chains to exploit the same technologies that reveal the most salable mixes of merchandise and shave dollars off of big chain store prices and/or reduce the time and cost dedicated to the business. The MRMS package offers a number of components that enable users to successfully manage multi-store operations. These components include a store operations module, a headquarters (HQ) remote client, HQ communications server programs, and HQ manager program.
With MRMS, store operations software operates at each store in the retail enterprise and maintains sales data in a local database. Each store generally includes a manager application for back-office operations (inventory, pricing, tracking, customers and suppliers, managing user accounts, register configuration, hardware set-up, et cetera). Key information obtained in the store operations database is regularly uploaded to the head office. At the same time, management changes made at the head office are downloaded to each store's database.
With MRMS, the HQ remote client and HQ communication server programs are part of the store operations HQ software package. HQ client is installed at each remote store and automatically, or manually with user interaction, initiates a connection to the head office based on a schedule specified by the head office. The connection can generally be made via the internet or over virtual private network (VPN). Once connected, the HQ client receives instructions to upload sales and inventory data or other information requested by HQ. It also updates the store's database to reflect any changes made at HQ that need to be propagated to the store.
The HQ communication server is installed on a machine at the head office and is responsible for exchanging data between the HQ database and remote stores. The HQ communications server sends HQ clients worksheets that need to be processed by the stores. One such worksheet is a request that one or more stores upload particular data specified by the worksheet.
At the head office, the HQ manager program provides the user interface and management of retail information in the HQ database. Functions necessary to manage a retail chain are provided. HQ Manager is sometimes used for integration to other enterprise-level applications, such as financials and Business Intelligence. HQ manager lets users create new inventory items or update the data (items, suppliers, prices, costs, et cetera) that keep the user's retail chain running smoothly. HQ manager enables the user to set policies and procedures for each store to follow, then enforces those rules throughout the enterprise. Specially tailored, multi-level reports let the user sort and combine business data—even drilling down to modify the database directly from the reports.
With MRMS, HQ employs known “worksheets” to implement management changes. The user employs a number of different HQ worksheets to plan and execute changes to the HQ database and remote store databases. Worksheets initiate and control data exchanges between the head office and stores. Through worksheets, the head office can command any store, group of stores, or all stores to perform specific tasks that affect the local database, and then to report back processing status. Each worksheet contains built-in mechanisms to help the user properly plan desired changes, obtain approval for changes and track actual changes for other purposes.
While retail management systems have proven to be useful for retailers, some limitations to these systems exist. Some current retail management systems generally require a user to specify the data to be exchanged and the timing of data exchange. In some cases, this is accomplished through the selection and generation of worksheets. Moreover, some systems also generally require an update to the application that performs the data exchange each time that a new type of data needs to be exchanged. Accordingly, the prior art has generally not provided a system that is particularly extensible. If a retail management system could be provided that included data synchronization between a headquarters application and store operations, which was extensible, while not requiring unnecessary user interaction, an enhanced user experience would result.